Ted Leo and The Pharmacists :: the Ballad of the Sin Eater
A couple of summers ago Ted Leo was following me. Every show, every fest, benefits for day care centers, street corners, there he was, he and the guitar player with the white-guy afro. Prior to this magical summer, Ted Leo was a passing thing, the Wilco or Suede of years before—staples of the mixtapes people made me, never to capture my heart.
Well, the dumbasses never put this song on a tape. When I heard it, early in the summer, I was electrified and damned. While my friends walked away when Ted Leo and the Pharmacists started playing, you know, because they had seen them play that morning at the Jewel, I could only stand and wait for this song: a succinct musical indictment in travelin’ preacher patois AND a drum n’ bass n’ cowbell breakdown. It is driving and brilliant, loving and slicing, the perfect song for people who want to travel but know that traveling—especially in that English/Australian backpacker template—has a undertow of privilege and Orientalism that you can’t scrub off. On the other hand, who the hell wants to stay home? Not me and not this guy.
The narrative arc is of a wandering sort, reaching more and more exotic lands, still thinking that he can slouch off his skin and history with his indomitable spirit, only to find: they hate you cause you’re guilty.
Jonathan Kozol’s first book is the impassioned ramblings of a wealthy son of Boston who is brilliant and loving and just found out the world is fucked. From the idealistic mess comes this: “[There are] two very different kinds of guilt… the guilt that simply binds up individuals within a tight and frightened know of shame and fear, and—in striking contrast—that experience of pain and outrage, followed by a sense of individual self-liberation, which functions not as a neurotic bind but rather as a threshold into energetic and reflective action.”
A note on the Beau Geste reference, a literary nod to the English paternalism and adventure hero and a term that has come to mean (according to Wikipedia) “a gracious (but usually meaningless) gesture.” Catch this: the last time I saw them perform this song, Ted Leo took the mic and smashed it into his forehead three times: “They hate you because [bash] you’re [bash] guilty [bash]. “ Blood ran down his face. If the blood of good men could save us, trouble would have ended long ago; but I appreciate the gracious and meaningless gesture, brother. I truly do.
the Ballad of the Sin Eater (7.3MB MP3)
Ted Leo and The Pharmacists (homepage)